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Goals for ROW80 and the Year Ahead and Snowstorm Photos

See, that's what it feels like if you don't make goals and plans, and stick to them. (If your goal is to Do Nothing and take each day as it comes, that's okay too.)

As we do every month and year on the Forum, we all shared our goals for 2013 at the start of January.

I re-started editing Druid's Moon a few days ago, and was thinking about how long it's going to take me, and so on; so these are the goals I came up with:Finish editing Druid's Moon. I'd love to finish in a month or so but that's not going to happen. It took me an hour the other day to change (among others) this ridiculously passive telling sentence:

"Lyne hurried home with her shopping, pulling her head as far down as she could into her collar"

to something more like showing, in deep pov:

"Lyne drew her head as far down as she could into the collar of her raincoat, and shifted her grocery bag to her other hand, wrestling with her umbrella."

Anyhow, because of that, I probably won't be finished by the time March rolls around, so I'll use NaNoEdMo to help me complete the edits. Until then, working on the edits will be my goal for this round of A Round of Words in 80 Days. I'll need to do some more research in that time, too (archaeology, Druids, Cornwall, caves, Celtic legends, hereditary titles in England, etc.).

I'll still be querying Out of the Water (sigh).

Then I can share Druid's Moon with betas, and start typing up Captive of the Sea (Santiago's story; the one from the last NaNoWriMo).

Then I should really finish editing Rome, Rhymes and Risk.

And in between I'd really like to get some of my short stories fixed up.

As for other goals, I like my two-days-per-week blogging schedule, but I'd really like to introduce some new tabs on the blog, linking to snips that I've posted and events I've hosted.

I've cut down on Facebook, but I'd like to scale back even more - right now I'm still getting about 20 people's updates in my email and what with that and the hundreds of anonymous spam blog comments that roll through, and all the ridiculous coupons and things, I feel like I'm hauling armfuls to the trash every time I open my Yahoo mail. Luckily I have Gmail, but still...

And oh yes, knitting. I've got two very ambitious Fair Isle projects, one started and one to come, and then Helene Boudreau tweeted a link to some mermaid gloves that I'd love to knit! I made two blankets as Christmas gifts that cut down my stash in a beautiful way - I've only got a box of wool left now. So no guilt over buying new skeins!

Hmm, what else? Scrapbooking has really fallen by the wayside. Baking had, but I've picked that up again in the last couple of weeks. I'd really like to read some of the books I already own instead of buying more (ahem, especially the ones off the list of 180 books down the left-hand side of this blog). I've gotten so many of Andrew Lang's rainbow fairy books from the Folio Society, and so far I've only read two! Not to mention the poetry (a collection of WWI poetry, Auden, Hopkins, etc.), the John Buchan and Josephine Tey books, the... Well, there're a lot.

And tidy up the garage (full of boxes of books) and the library.

I want a sabbatical!

We didn't even get a proper snow day at work, because no one quite predicted that we would get 45cm in one afternoon last week - a new one-day record for Montreal, beating the previous record snowfall from 1971!
I tweeted lots of photos:

And here's a lovely sketch of the snow by Shari Blaukopf, to save you from clicking on all the above links (I thought embedding tweets would include the photo; they're saved on the iPod I access Twitter on and not on this computer, unfortunately):

Have you had snow or are you expecting snow? Wouldn't you just love a snow day?

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Comments

The year our friends came over from Atlanta, Deniz, and after six years when there was no snow at all, we had a horrendous blizzard and they couldn't leave the house. So far we have not seen snow this January and I have the pray mat out in the hope that we won't. Yes, I have a long list of writing 'to be completed' hope we both make it. x

Am keeping my fingers crossed we have no snow this winter - hate the stuff:( good goals there and I to am using NaNoEdMo to help me acheive mine - tried it last year and found it very helpful -all the best:)

I love snow and snow days. While I lived in Montreal (for 2 years until last december) we never got 'that much snow'. Instead, Norwalk, Ct, the town I left for Montreal, got the biggest snowstorm of its history in OCTOBER. (Ok, having Halloween cancelled wouldn't have been fun. I agree with that).

Now that I'm back in the states, YOU get the historic snowstorm... what's up with that?! =( No freaking fair.

Thanks everyone! I hate to say it but we just had an unseasonably warm few days and all that lovely snow is nearly all gone!Georgina, I know what you mean - we haven't had a "proper" Montreal winter for a long time now. Oh, the blizzards I remember from when I was a kid...

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